Very much so. However, a little more information as to why you posed the question could help. What brought this on?

Xifanie and other people in the past have mentioned that boss fights felt like they took forever and I started thinking about what the ideal time for a boss fight to take should be; thing is, that's dependent on the player. I think 10-15mins is roughly where it should be but not everyone will agree with that and in the end it's not me playing the mod. Having the option there should alleviate that problem a bit.

I personally didn't think the HP was that big a deal, because bosses are supposed to be a big deal, but I can understand why other players might not like it. Someone else made a good point: once you nail down a strategy, it's just a matter of surviving long enough to keep doing it. That can get a little repetitive if the boss just takes that long to die, which is why I thought the Curator was too much even for a battle that's supposed to be hilariously hard to win. 45 freakin' minutes to take that thing down.

A "Fast Mode" might not be necessary. Just trimming some of the bosses' fat would be a compromise.

Oh, that doesn't even come close to the multiple hours it took me to take down the final super boss of Last Dream: World Unknown on Legendary difficulty during the beta. That is not even taking into account the failed attempts. I think the fight lasted more than 3 hours but I don't know for sure how long it took as I didn't record it. The sense of accomplishment afterwards was worth it though! I can't wait to jump into this mod once its polished.

Xifanie and other people in the past have mentioned that boss fights felt like they took forever and I started thinking about what the ideal time for a boss fight to take should be; thing is, that's dependent on the player. I think 10-15mins is roughly where it should be but not everyone will agree with that and in the end it's not me playing the mod. Having the option there should alleviate that problem a bit.

You'll see that virtually all of the boss fights fall within the time frame of 8- 15 minutes as you think it should be, which I agree with as well. The only ones that are outside of that range are either bosses that should have more health seeing as they are more important to the story or game as a whole, or are bosses that were either bugged at the time and have been fixed, or had too much health at the time and have been shaved down some. I should also note that I was by no means getting the fights done as fast as I possibly could either. In a lot of them I had Sadness which reduces damage dealt and limit fill speed, both of which could have pushed these times much lower. Couple that with that the fact that I could have probably done my Rank Up's and materia situations better and to shave more off and you begin to see how I did not do a lot of these fights anywhere near as fast as they could be done. Hell, you can even factor in that I also had Intro and Outro's for every single video, and that probably adds up to another 15 - 20 seconds that could be taken off the total times because they're just for show, they're not apart of the actual fight themselves.

It's kinda funny actually, looking at those playtimes and with all the points I made, you could actually make an argument in the opposite direction and say that some of these bosses may need a buff in health instead of a debuff! Not that I am asking for that mind you. By and large I think you've pretty much got the boss health numbers where they should be across the board. Could they use some tweaks here and there? Perhaps? We shall see when 1.5 comes out. But I think the health numbers are in a great spot personally.

I personally didn't think the HP was that big a deal, because bosses are supposed to be a big deal, but I can understand why other players might not like it. Someone else made a good point: once you nail down a strategy, it's just a matter of surviving long enough to keep doing it. That can get a little repetitive if the boss just takes that long to die, which is why I thought the Curator was too much even for a battle that's supposed to be hilariously hard to win. 45 freakin' minutes to take that thing down.

A "Fast Mode" might not be necessary. Just trimming some of the bosses' fat would be a compromise.

This speaks more to potential enemy AI tweaks that could be added to make bosses change their attack strategies when they get lower on health than health itself. Adding those kinds of things to ALL bosses though would probably be a ton of work I imagine? And judging by what Sega said that's probably not going to happen when 1.5 hits. So yeah, I agree with the just small tweaks and changing of health numbers if necessary, but as I mentioned, I don't think it is.

I apologise if this was posted already, but with 203 pages it's a bit hard to verify.

I seem to have Cait Sith and Vincent's innate abilities swapped on my installation. I don't know if I need to simply reinstall it or not.

I've tried the two fixes, but it seems I'm already "up to date."

(I've just done a clean reinstall and it's fixed issues I was having with Dark Cave's Guard Scorpion.)

Nevertheless, this mod is excellent. I never imagined I was going to play this game again, as even though I was always a fan of the game's mechanics, there was only so much playing around with them I could do. This mod really forces you to use and understand every aspect of the game and it's brilliant.

Hey Sega Chief, thanks so much for this mod, it's my favorite mod of all time. Is there any estimate for when 1.5 will come out?

It was supposed to be a few weeks ago but I had to stop for a heady cocktail of unit assessments and a week's holiday abroad. I'm back to work on it now, but I can't really say when it'll be done. I've got the week off work again next week but not going anywhere this time so I'll use that to power ahead.

You'll see that virtually all of the boss fights fall within the time frame of 8- 15 minutes as you think it should be, which I agree with as well. The only ones that are outside of that range are either bosses that should have more health seeing as they are more important to the story or game as a whole, or are bosses that were either bugged at the time and have been fixed, or had too much health at the time and have been shaved down some. I should also note that I was by no means getting the fights done as fast as I possibly could either. In a lot of them I had Sadness which reduces damage dealt and limit fill speed, both of which could have pushed these times much lower. Couple that with that the fact that I could have probably done my Rank Up's and materia situations better and to shave more off and you begin to see how I did not do a lot of these fights anywhere near as fast as they could be done. Hell, you can even factor in that I also had Intro and Outro's for every single video, and that probably adds up to another 15 - 20 seconds that could be taken off the total times because they're just for show, they're not apart of the actual fight themselves.

It's kinda funny actually, looking at those playtimes and with all the points I made, you could actually make an argument in the opposite direction and say that some of these bosses may need a buff in health instead of a debuff! Not that I am asking for that mind you. By and large I think you've pretty much got the boss health numbers where they should be across the board. Could they use some tweaks here and there? Perhaps? We shall see when 1.5 comes out. But I think the health numbers are in a great spot personally.

This speaks more to potential enemy AI tweaks that could be added to make bosses change their attack strategies when they get lower on health than health itself. Adding those kinds of things to ALL bosses though would probably be a ton of work I imagine? And judging by what Sega said that's probably not going to happen when 1.5 hits. So yeah, I agree with the just small tweaks and changing of health numbers if necessary, but as I mentioned, I don't think it is.

This! Having the bosses change strategies when reaching the "critical" stages keeps the fight intense and actually alleviates the feeling of having the battles drawn out.

The timeframe thing is a personal preference; there's no set rule for how long a fight should be, so long as extremes are avoided (1min or 1hr+ for example). It's actually not too difficult to change a Boss' attacks when they reach a certain HP threshold due to most of them having a HP check in their General Counter AI and the ability to have them read attack IDs from variables instead of directly (letting you load a different attack into the var when the conditions are met). The majority of the Disc 1/Disc 2 bosses have altered behavior after conditions are met like reduced HP or certain attacks are used, whereas a lot of the Disc 3 ones don't change at all. Maybe that's what's missing?

I apologise if this was posted already, but with 203 pages it's a bit hard to verify.

I seem to have Cait Sith and Vincent's innate abilities swapped on my installation. I don't know if I need to simply reinstall it or not.

I've tried the two fixes, but it seems I'm already "up to date."

(I've just done a clean reinstall and it's fixed issues I was having with Dark Cave's Guard Scorpion.)

Nevertheless, this mod is excellent. I never imagined I was going to play this game again, as even though I was always a fan of the game's mechanics, there was only so much playing around with them I could do. This mod really forces you to use and understand every aspect of the game and it's brilliant.

The innates were swapped but the text wasn't (I forgot); Vincent now has the MP > HP regeneration and Cait has the passive MP regen. Vincent's one matches his Limit forms quite well because it lets that MP get used while he auto-attacks. Cait's is going to be changed so that, on top of the MP regen, he gets a much stronger MP regen while defending (+20 or something). I should mention the new innates for 1.5:

Cloud: When an ally is KO'd, he gains Wall + Regen (effect activates once - this innate only available after Cloud recovered from Mideel).Aeris: Geo-stance covers more elements (space issue prevented this before)Yuffie: Magic evade was dropped, physical evade set to 255% when hit by a physical but wears off after a few turns or if targeted by a magic effect. Issue with this is that accuracy gains evasion, which'll need something done to the .EXE. This problem applies Cait Sith: Passive MP regen of +1 per tick; when defending, this becomes +20 per tick.Vincent: HP sporadically raised by current MP as an irregular regen.Cid: Starts battle with a STR/MAG boost, loses this for rest of battle if his HP drops below 50% at any point.

The innates were swapped but the text wasn't (I forgot); Vincent now has the MP > HP regeneration and Cait has the passive MP regen. Vincent's one matches his Limit forms quite well because it lets that MP get used while he auto-attacks. Cait's is going to be changed so that, on top of the MP regen, he gets a much stronger MP regen while defending (+20 or something). I should mention the new innates for 1.5:

Cloud: When an ally is KO'd, he gains Wall + Regen (effect activates once - this innate only available after Cloud recovered from Mideel).Aeris: Geo-stance covers more elements (space issue prevented this before)Yuffie: Magic evade was dropped, physical evade set to 255% when hit by a physical but wears off after a few turns or if targeted by a magic effect. Issue with this is that accuracy gains evasion, which'll need something done to the .EXE. This problem applies Cait Sith: Passive MP regen of +1 per tick; when defending, this becomes +20 per tick.Vincent: HP sporadically raised by current MP as an irregular regen.Cid: Starts battle with a STR/MAG boost, loses this for rest of battle if his HP drops below 50% at any point.

Oh okay, cool. Until now I felt like I was "cheating" by exploiting Vincent's innate in his beast mode, but now that I know you did it on purpose I shall exploit the bahoozits out of it.

It seems to have been a real struggle to settle on an ability that feels right for Cid, doesn't it? Auto-crits, reactive guard, now this. I like it though, it fits in with how he acts like he's the "old guy" of the team.

The innates were swapped but the text wasn't (I forgot); Vincent now has the MP > HP regeneration and Cait has the passive MP regen. Vincent's one matches his Limit forms quite well because it lets that MP get used while he auto-attacks. Cait's is going to be changed so that, on top of the MP regen, he gets a much stronger MP regen while defending (+20 or something). I should mention the new innates for 1.5:

Cloud: When an ally is KO'd, he gains Wall + Regen (effect activates once - this innate only available after Cloud recovered from Mideel).Aeris: Geo-stance covers more elements (space issue prevented this before)Yuffie: Magic evade was dropped, physical evade set to 255% when hit by a physical but wears off after a few turns or if targeted by a magic effect. Issue with this is that accuracy gains evasion, which'll need something done to the .EXE. This problem applies Cait Sith: Passive MP regen of +1 per tick; when defending, this becomes +20 per tick.Vincent: HP sporadically raised by current MP as an irregular regen.Cid: Starts battle with a STR/MAG boost, loses this for rest of battle if his HP drops below 50% at any point.

Not to sound like "Hey you changed the innates i liked!" but why change Cids and Clouds to these new ones?Cid i thought was good with the Barriers (if the go through resist that would have been amazing) since it does not shoehorn him into a melee dps role, but adds a tank role aswell. With the current one for 1.5 + the gear + rank up options he can only be a physical dmg dealer, period which is a shame.

As for Cloud, I feel its kinda wasted, since Wall + Regen are 1) easy lategame to apply, 2) quite boring from a innate standpoint. The only thing i can see going for this new one is Cloud being a recovery bot, aka when a teammate dies, Cloud is protected to get them back up again. I though the switching MAG/STR was a cool idea but hey in the end it your mod, just my two cents. Ohh, another thing for Cloud could maybe be reverse Yuffie innate. When he gets hit by magic, he gains STR (to kill the casters), when he gets hit phyc he gains MAG etc.

PS: Love the fact that you switched Vincent and Cait. They no both have multiple roles. Vincent can save mp for sustain while being a phyc dmg dealer + caster and Cait can be Tank or a caster/support!

SC, was it you that notified me that Bugen's lab should play 4 sound effects simultaneously? Anyway, to whoever did, you are right. It's clearly broken in the PC port - but it works in PSX. It uses akao opcode 0x23 (when playing 4 musics). I am adding this to my dll as we speak - and also updating akao documentation. I made other errors too. The summon effects in battle also allow for multiple effects and probably use this opcode (akao) in PSX.

The timeframe thing is a personal preference; there's no set rule for how long a fight should be, so long as extremes are avoided (1min or 1hr+ for example). It's actually not too difficult to change a Boss' attacks when they reach a certain HP threshold due to most of them having a HP check in their General Counter AI and the ability to have them read attack IDs from variables instead of directly (letting you load a different attack into the var when the conditions are met). The majority of the Disc 1/Disc 2 bosses have altered behavior after conditions are met like reduced HP or certain attacks are used, whereas a lot of the Disc 3 ones don't change at all. Maybe that's what's missing?

I was referring more to the coming up with ideas part rather than the actual implementation part. I imagine you've got all the number changing and coding stuff on auto-pilot at this point. If every other boss started casting Fire2 at 30% health it'd get repetitive quite quickly though, and avoiding that kind of repetitive nature of boss AI would be a good plan. Certainly if you've got some ideas that could be added to bosses I would go ahead and test them out. Or people could share theirs as well. I'm not very creative nor do I know much about the coding, so anything I would come up with probably wouldn't be that great, but even simple changes like making a normally single target magic spell a boss casts into a multi target attack or throwing Reflect on your team at different health thresholds could elicit the desired effect for sure. Any type of "Monkeywrench" or slight strategy changes the bosses have would certainly do it.

As for any specific bosses that come to mind? Not sure about that, Tyrant perhaps?

SC, was it you that notified me that Bugen's lab should play 4 sound effects simultaneously? Anyway, to whoever did, you are right. It's clearly broken in the PC port - but it works in PSX. It uses akao opcode 0x23 (when playing 4 musics). I am adding this to my dll as we speak - and also updating akao documentation. I made other errors too. The summon effects in battle also allow for multiple effects and probably use this opcode (akao) in PSX.

I'm testing with PSX, since PC is totally unreliable.

Yeah, it seems that some sound effects are able to play simultaneously using Akao 23 but not others. I tested it with alarm and three short SFX (jump, etc.) and they all played together, but the four in bugen's observatory seem to override each other and the 4th one is the only audible one. Also, on that particular field the channel(s) aren't cleared when the SFX has finished because the 2nd Akao 23 on that field script can't be heard at all when it triggers; adding a Play Sound #0 beforehand seems to fix this.

I was referring more to the coming up with ideas part rather than the actual implementation part. I imagine you've got all the number changing and coding stuff on auto-pilot at this point. If every other boss started casting Fire2 at 30% health it'd get repetitive quite quickly though, and avoiding that kind of repetitive nature of boss AI would be a good plan. Certainly if you've got some ideas that could be added to bosses I would go ahead and test them out. Or people could share theirs as well. I'm not very creative nor do I know much about the coding, so anything I would come up with probably wouldn't be that great, but even simple changes like making a normally single target magic spell a boss casts into a multi target attack or throwing Reflect on your team at different health thresholds could elicit the desired effect for sure. Any type of "Monkeywrench" or slight strategy changes the bosses have would certainly do it.

As for any specific bosses that come to mind? Not sure about that, Tyrant perhaps?

I think it's mostly Disc 3 bosses that are lacking adaptive AI and mechanics. I'll be keeping that in mind while I re-work them.

Hey-o, first off loooove the mod, I decided to replay FFVII in anticipation of the remake, and upon finding this, I've fallen in love with the game all over again.. phenominal work! A quick question - I've looked all over with Google and such but couldn't find my answer - I'm playing version 1.4, and reached the Shinra Mansion. I read the clue about the melody, and played it on the piano, triggering SFX, music change, and the "something has escaped" prompt... but I haven't found anything.. Beat Lamba, recruited Vincent, found Sephy, etc., but no sign of an escaped.. anything.

Yeah, well, I'm actually on disc 3 and I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. I didn't actually get around to playing that melody until... like 15 minutes ago because someone finally brought it up, but now that I did, I checked everything in the manor including the basement lab, and I'm not finding anything.

A bug list would've been nice, unless there actually was one all along.

Northern Crater:- I tried to PHS at a save point with 2 characters and I could not exit because I did not select 3. Unfortunately, I attempted this before saving; that sucked.- I exited the crater after figuring out I was unprepared for the boss of the path that I took. After going back down, I was lazy and just wanted to try out another boss, so I sent everyone the left path, then everyone the upper path, IIRC I chose Cloud/Tifa/Yuffie but Tifa left ahead, while Aeris was all the way over to the left side of the screen, stuck, running in place forever trying to reach me.

Question: Is it possible to steal rare items at lvl 99? I solved my "bosses have too many HP" problem by overleveling (really, what helped was leveling my limits and materias), and now trying to get everyone's better weapons, I find myself dealing with several hundred steal misses without a Sneak glove (I can't steal anything at ALL), and a hundred successful normal steals with the Sneak Glove (100% steal rate). For the record I was trying to steal some Dragon Armlets, but all I ever got were Tents (Crater Dragon) and Remedies (Parasites), and only if I had the Sneak Glove equipped. It seems like the only way I can fix this is to start over or cheat.

Yeah, well, I'm actually on disc 3 and I'm not sure what I'm looking for here. I didn't actually get around to playing that melody until... like 15 minutes ago because someone finally brought it up, but now that I did, I checked everything in the manor including the basement lab, and I'm not finding anything.

A bug list would've been nice, unless there actually was one all along.

Northern Crater:- I tried to PHS at a save point with 2 characters and I could not exit because I did not select 3. Unfortunately, I attempted this before saving; that sucked.- I exited the crater after figuring out I was unprepared for the boss of the path that I took. After going back down, I was lazy and just wanted to try out another boss, so I sent everyone the left path, then everyone the upper path, IIRC I chose Cloud/Tifa/Yuffie but Tifa left ahead, while Aeris was all the way over to the left side of the screen, stuck, running in place forever trying to reach me.

Question: Is it possible to steal rare items at lvl 99? I solved my "bosses have too many HP" problem by overleveling (really, what helped was leveling my limits and materias), and now trying to get everyone's better weapons, I find myself dealing with several hundred steal misses without a Sneak glove (I can't steal anything at ALL), and a hundred successful normal steals with the Sneak Glove (100% steal rate). For the record I was trying to steal some Dragon Armlets, but all I ever got were Tents (Crater Dragon) and Remedies (Parasites), and only if I had the Sneak Glove equipped. It seems like the only way I can fix this is to start over or cheat.

I'll disable PHS temporarily from the menu when splitting up; the other problem sounds like a flaw in the script, just to clarify you picked Tifa but she ran off as if she hadn't been picked?

The Rare steals should have been removed from the mod by this point; they were basically unobtainable due to an oversight. I'll need to check the scene.bin when I get back from college, but I think the way it should be in the current patch is one of the weapons needed is a drop, the other is obtained either by Steal or Morph. If it is Steal, but in the 2nd steal slot, then I'll need to bump it up into the 1st slot. Sorry for the hassle, the situation with obtaining weapons from the Crater has been a mess for a while.

In my tests, Aeris will always replace the party member you chose in your 3rd slot. If you send her left/up, and you head that way as well, that is. (That sounds dangerous if your party leader is in that slot)

Aeris will only bug and be on the left side of the screen, where she can't walk, if it's your second time descending and choosing who goes where, and NOT if Yuffie is your 3rd party member, but WILL bug and WILL be misplaced if it's Tifa.

It's a bit annoying to go through the whole thing every time since I don't have Save Anywhere, so I'll stop my testing here. I've never had such weird things happen to me while making FFT events, but FFT also doesn't handle main characters quite the same way in events.

In my tests, Aeris will always replace the party member you chose in your 3rd slot. If you send her left/up, and you head that way as well, that is. (That sounds dangerous if your party leader is in that slot)

Aeris will only bug and be on the left side of the screen, where she can't walk, if it's your second time descending and choosing who goes where, and NOT if Yuffie is your 3rd party member, but WILL bug and WILL be misplaced if it's Tifa.

It's a bit annoying to go through the whole thing every time since I don't have Save Anywhere, so I'll stop my testing here. I've never had such weird things happen to me while making FFT events, but FFT also doesn't handle main characters quite the same way in events.

On those fields are a descending list of checks that first assigns a value to a variable for each character, and based on the value of this var it will execute one of three scripts; go in direction A, go in direction B, or join party leader. To get past the other checks when it has executed the correct one, it uses label jumps. The problem is likely that one of these jumps and/or var checks has the wrong value.

But if this problem is happening on successive visits, and not the first visit, then another possibility is that the vars aren't being reset when leaving the Crater so when you go back down again, the retained values are overriding the scripts. Either way, I'll get to the bottom of it.

I got stuck at dark cave. Screen is totally black and frozen when entering the 3rd screen of dark cave (railway station is the first screen, Shina section with vanish guy besides iron gate is the second screen).

It is so strange, I tried to reinstall FF 7 and repatch it on my Win 7 machine, the issue persists. Also I tried a different PC with Winxp system, the same issue happens. I am using NT 1.4 Build Download - 6th January 2017. Also tried hotfix of 18 Jan 2017 & 25 Feb 2017, but no luck.

I got stuck at dark cave. Screen is totally black and frozen when entering the 3rd screen of dark cave (railway station is the first screen, Shina section with vanish guy besides iron gate is the second screen).

It is so strange, I tried to reinstall FF 7 and repatch it on my Win 7 machine, the issue persists. Also I tried a different PC with Winxp system, the same issue happens. I am using NT 1.4 Build Download - 6th January 2017. Also tried hotfix of 18 Jan 2017 & 25 Feb 2017, but no luck.

Do you have any idea about it?

Cheers

Not sure, I'll jump in there just now and take a look.

Edit: The field appears to be operable, so we need to figure out why it's crashing for you there. Are there any other mods in play? The other possibility is a var clash that's preventing some of the field script logic from resolving. I'll go over the vars in there and see if I can spot any possible problems.